As I wrote yesterday, this race didn’t go quite as planned. I did walk away with a trophy and liquid prize, and I’m happy with my times, but I had trouble sticking with the planned race effort.
Pre-Race
I drove down to Charlottesville with Jon on Saturday morning. We took our time, stopping at the Corner for some Little Johns, Arch’s and a brief walking tour of the Grounds (wahoowa!) before checking into the hotel and unloading half of our triathlon crap. We then proceeded to the race site, which was half an hour down the road at Lake Monticello. We got there in time for packet pick-up and a brief swim in the lake. The swim was an important part of my race plan, as it was my first time EVER swimming in my wetsuit in open water. I am SO GLAD I did it, because it was a mess. My wetsuit is tight and my legs are muscular (understatement of the year), so I could barely get the suit over my legs and onto my body. I got it on, but it was way too low and I felt constricted in every way. I got in an uncomfortable 20 minutes of laps then got out, but I’m glad I did that to learn that a wetsuit does NOT shift for extra comfort once you get in the water, and I learned how the wetsuit felt while swimming (terrible).
After the practice swim, we went back to Charlottesville for pre-race dinner with my friends and were able to get in bed at 8 and watch Ironman (appropriate, no?) until lights out around 9:30.
The race didn’t start until 8:30, so we had plenty of time to sleep in (6:00), get ready, check that we had all of our gear and get to the race. As we were packing up our gear I realized I forgot one tiny, little, very significant piece of equipment: my aero bottle straw. After a brief moment of panic, I came up with a ingenious solution: big gulp straw. We took a detour on the way to the race and *acquired* a straw at a 7-11 before proceeding to the race. The straw was a little bit smaller than my aero straw, but it was tall enough for me to reach and I taped it in place to prevent it from bouncing out of the bottle on the ride. Phew.
After that small debacle, I thought I finally had it all together. We got to the race, set up transition, then picked up our timing chips. I got back to transition with a few minutes until I needed to get into my wetsuit, only to see everyone walking around with numbers written on them. Hmmm…. body marking. How did I miss that? Not wanting to miss my swim start, I figured it probably wouldn’t matter and went without.
Swim
Remembering how difficult it was to get into my wetsuit the day before, I body glided my calves so the wetsuit could get up and over them with less struggle. I got my wetsuit on in stages: first over the calves, then the knees, pulled as far up my legs as possible, then onto my body and zipped up. Fortunately, with the use of bodyglide and tri shorts, the stupid thing actually fit. It still wasn’t comfortable though.
At the beach I hung out with my friends and splashed around in the water a little to get acclimated. The men started 8 minutes before the women, so I watched my friends swim off then prepared myself for 30-ish minutes of swimming. My goal was to swim hard the whole time and not really think about the bike ride coming up. When the horn went off, I dove in and got going. I was swimming pretty hard, but not too fast, for a few minutes. I looked up to find the first turn buoy and was disappointed that I still wasn’t close. The wetsuit was pressing on my chest, making it hard to breathe deep, and I was feeling kind of meh about the whole thing. I was probably only 5 minutes into the race at that point and really tempted to look at my watch to see how much longer I had to go. Not a good sign. I slowed down then and just tried to find a good swim rhythm, or even better, some fast feet to draft off. Once I got around the first turn buoy I found some feet and figured I’d just take it easy and draft for a while. Unfortunately, I found drifting feet and ended up pretty far from the buoy line. Seeing how far I was from everyone else I gave up my feet and tried to find my own rhythm. It was probably halfway through the swim before I really got into the groove, but I held a decent medium pace for the rest of the race.
I ran out of the water and hit lap on my watch before I hit T1. My swim time was 29:40, and official swim was 30:06 including the run to transition. While I’m happy with the time, I’m a little annoyed with the way I swam. The wetsuit was constricting, made it difficult to breathe and made my legs hot when I kicked, I drafted but only to my detriment when I swam off the line, and didn’t do the whole thing at the hard effort I was going for.
T1
I ran out of the lake and up the beach, then had the brilliant idea that I’d start unzipping my wetsuit on the way to T1 so I started walking and trying to un-velcro and zip. It didn’t work. I jogged into transition and stopped at my stuff then took off the stupid wetsuit. It took a minute or so, but I was able to get it off easily and didn’t even rip my chip off with it. I had my nutrition and sunglasses in my helmet, so I stocked up, put on the glasses and helmet, slipped on my shoes and ran to the bike mount line. It was probably my slowest T1 ever (2:33), but considering the fact that it was my first wetsuit T1, I’m not too disappointed there.
Bike
I drove the bike course the day before, and it looked beautiful with few hills and not too many sharp turns. It had potential to be a very fast course. It started out with a small incline then a good downhill…. straight into a sharp right turn then the first small hill of the day. Once those were done, I tried getting into the groove and keeping my watts at the target my coach set for me. I was pushing and pushing and pushing, but I just couldn’t get my average watts where I wanted them. My legs felt like they were pedaling through molasses, and the only way for me to get my watts up was to increase the tension and ride at a lower cadence. It was kind of frustrating, but I eventually just let it go and did my best to ride a consistent race.
Of course, as beautiful as the course was it was difficult to remain consistent. There are few hills, but it is very minorly rolly the entire way. With these small rollers, it is almost impossible to stay at a certain watt, and I probably changed gears every minute in an effort to keep my watts level.
Because it was a small field, I was riding alone on the course. I could almost always see someone in the distance ahead of me, but it was nice to feel like I had the roads to myself. The few times I’d get within range of someone, I’d get annoyed about staying out of draft distance or not letting my ego get to me as they passed. Mostly, I just rode my own race, which is exactly how I should have done it. I was able to grab a water bottle and refill my aero bottle on the go on the first loop, and stuck to my 20 minute nutrition schedule perfectly.
I lapped my watch after the first loop and saw that I was on track to go just sub-3:00 if I maintained my current pace. I made an effort to go a bit harder (to the watts I had intended all along), but I only succeeded in getting out out of Z2. I remained consistent and decided to just enjoy the ride. I passed by the now-recognizable landmarks: the chicken farm, the country church, the house with barking dogs and an invisible fence (that one was a bit nerve wracking), and passed the bottle grab again, this time not needing any more water. With 20 minutes until I hit 3:00 I started getting nervous that I wouldn’t make it and tried to up the effort again. I stopped regulating my effort and hoped I could hammer it out to the end. Looking at my data, I barely increased my wattage or heart rate but I DID negative split and come in to transition in a 2:57:40!!
Finish/T2
I came into the final stretch and dismounted…. then had to run my bike another minute or so to actually get to the timing mat. I actually passed a girl running with the bike (not in my division) and tried to help her out a bit because she looked like she was struggling. I was DONE, and in just a hair over 3:30. But I wasn’t really done because I still had a 4.5 mile run to do. I took my time racking my bike, putting on my running shoes, and grabbing my camera and was about to leave transition when my friend biked in. I figured I wasn’t really racing, so I might as well wait for him to change and have some company. I probably spent 5 minutes in transition because of this, but it was fun and the true competition was over.
Run
We ran out together and settled into a nice comfortable pace. Or I should say, a nice comfortable pace if you are only running 4.5 miles. After a few minutes he admitted that it was probably a bit too fast for a half marathon, so we slowed it down a little (probably not enough, I was a little bit YAY LETS GO FAST!) and ran together for two miles in the small rolling hills of the Lake Monticello neighborhood. The good news is that my legs felt GREAT!! They felt just as good, if not better, than they have since I started running again and this is AFTER three hours of cycling. Obviously the bike training I’ve been doing for the past 6 months is really paying off. After two miles of running together, I turned around and headed back to the transition/finish area to turn in my chip, collect my finisher’s water bottle, and cheer for my friends as they finished. On my way I was able to run a few steps with Jon at his way-too-fast-for-me-right-now pace, but my legs still felt great. Yay recovery!!!
Post Race
It took a while for the results to be posted, but… I WON! Well, won the overall aqua-bike division, that is.
I won a trophy and BEER, and hit my guesstimated times exactly, so I really should be happy with this race. My swim effort and feel for the water while wearing a wetsuit was not so good, but I still finished a 1.2 mile swim in under 30 minutes. My average watts ended up being the very top of Z2 when my goal was to be towards the top of Z3. I can look at this as a failure to hit my watts/effort, but I’m choosing to look at is as meeting my time goal at a WAY lower effort than I was aiming for. This is a GOOD THING with 6 weeks left of ironman training.
In a post race discussion, my coach confirmed that on that kind of course it is nearly impossible to ride consistent watts, and may be better to just go by effort. I did keep my watts in a narrow range and my HR under control, so I feel a little better about the bike. I just wish I had pushed more, or had the capability to push more. After the race I was a little stiff and tired, but I’m not sore at all and am ready to take this week very easy to get myself out of the fatigue hole I’ve been digging for weeks.
Final Notes
The race was really well run and I’d highly recommend it to anyone looking for a small, local (ish) race. I think there were fewer than 300 participants, and everything was done on a very small scale. There was no expo (thankfully!!), no lines for packet pick-up or race morning restrooms, and the course traffic was pretty sparse. Because it was so small, there were very few spectators, but the ones out there (mostly kids who lived in the houses along the route) were SUPER enthusiastic and fun to pass. The bike course was about a mile short (which seems to be SOP for the 70.3’s that I do), and a had more elevation change (2,000 ft) than you might expect for a relatively flat course. The run course seemed very gently rolling the whole way, and had frequent water and bathroom stops. There were on-course timing mats and real-time tracking…. that didn’t work, but that seemed like a random timing system glitch and not a systematic flaw in the race. Post-race food included pizza, cookies, water, sports drink and sodas and there was plenty for even the later finishers.
Plus, who doesn’t love a race that is near my beloved Charlottesville and hands out beer and pint glasses as an award?
Cheers, B
Clearly, I have become TOO STRONG FOR MY BIKE!! Take that, ironman training. 
